Re: P/390 replacement FLEX/ES or MP3000?

[David Boyes]

> I'm not sure what the actual intent is, but I received an email from
my
> P/390 client, wanting to explore the possibilities of upgrading to the
> MP3000 (about $3K on the used market).  Right now, I don't know if
this
> would be the disaster recovery machine, or a replacement for the
existing
> P/390 (with, perhaps, a second box for disaster recovery).

Given the price of spare parts for MP3Ks, I'd tell him to look into a
FlexES license first. Since he doesn't need zArch support (and couldn't
get it anyway even if he did), he's better off spending his $3K to get a
beefy Flex box which would certainly work with the NAS box, etc. Another
$3K will get him a 3 or 4 TB SCSI to SATA disk array fully loaded, and
he could ditch the NAS box or keep it, just as he likes. 

Even if he buys two or three MP3Ks, they're kinda big to just have lying
around for spares, and they eat power like crazy compared to a Flex box.

Re: P/390 replacement FLEX/ES or MP3000?

[Mike Hammock]

The MP3000 might work OK for the DR system.. there may be some minor
issues, to implement your tape system, but I don't think they want to use
the MP3000 as the 'production' machine.   You cannot ("legally") run the
ESL licensed software on the MP3000 so you would have to go to GOLC based
licenses (monthly charges at a significantly higher rate than the  current
ESL software) plus the needed products have all been with drawn (from
marketing as well as support) so I'm not sure just how you would get a
license at all.  Probably possible, but messy...

mike

C. M. (Mike) Hammock
Sr. Technical Support
zFrame & IBM zSeries Solutions
(404) 643-3258
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


   
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I'm not sure what the actual intent is, but I received an email from my
P/390 client, wanting to explore the possibilities of upgrading to the
MP3000 (about $3K on the used market).  Right now, I don't know if this
would be the disaster recovery machine, or a replacement for the existing
P/390 (with, perhaps, a second box for disaster recovery).

My gut says that this will come down to dollars as they are happy with the
current box (running VM/ESA 2.4).

It is a straight VM box.  However I've made some "modifications" to it.

I have a 256GB NAS unit up under the OS/2 side with a couple dozen 3390-3
drives defined.  The rest of the space is used to store emulated 3420 tape
drives.  When they had real 3410 drives, we converted about 12,000 volumes
to emulated drives on OS/2.  The NAS is backed up weekly via a SDLT drive.

I need to keep the same or similar setup on the new box.

Printing is via IP and we TN3270 in.

The only program products installed are Sort, VM/Archive, VM/Tape and
VM/Backup.
I wrote a tape robotics system using PROP and REXX to respond to tape
mounts from the products, use the OS/2 MOUNT command to mount the emulated
tape, and pass the drive to the user.  Been working fine for about 5 years
so far.  And, of course, it makes me a little nervous about going to a
different box.

When I had a MP3000, I believe the I/O rate on it's emulated drives was
similar to the P/390, that is about 50 I/Os per second.  I should be able
to mount a NAS on the MP/3000s' OS/2 side and keep everything the same.  I
think we would have to have, at least one set of Internal drives, in order
to have the disk space that the P/390 had.

So, for those that have upgraded from the P/390, do you have any strong
beliefs or "gotchas" when you did your upgrade?

Thanks

Tom Duerbusch
THD Consulting



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